


All The Dying Children

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [27]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Child Soldiers, Earth-3, Families of Choice, Forgiveness, Freedom, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Jason Todd is a Talon, Mirror Universe, a crowbar, and two warehouses, being the hero means saving everybody, but not like that, crazy things crazy people do, this story contains an explosion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3440708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owlman's second Talon is angry. Angry means there's still a person inside.</p><p>Maybe, somebody the Jokester can save.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Dying Children

The fancy little earpiece hit the munitions-warehouse floor, and a second later was crushed with prejudice under a long shiny shoe, whose owner grinned. Right, then. Talon was no longer wired, had lost his knife, and he was still off-balance from the blow that had knocked the hardware loose. No time like the present.

Going into a spin, Jokester slammed the kid against the corrugated iron wall. He knew his pin would only last so long, but hopefully long enough, and _hopefully_ this gamble wouldn't get anyone killed. Including him. " _Listen,_ " he hissed. "We've been fighting for most of a year now, kid, and I like to think I'm getting to know you pretty well."

Talon struggled silently.

This one spoke more often than the last one had; maybe it was his age. The first Talon had started appearing as the merest slip of a kid, years ago, before Jokester was even in the game, and had grown all the way up before he disappeared. Ten months after that this one had debuted, small again but not _nearly_ as small as the first time; J would now put him at maybe fourteen. Neither had ever been especially talkative, even compared to their boss.

Of course, the Owl had been known to monologue occasionally, so that might not be the best comparison.

"You're not like the other one," J told the boy, winning a split second of stillness before his captive jerked harder, almost breaking his hold. Hating himself just a little for it, Jokester moved his right hand with its joy-buzzer taser ring higher, closer to the boy's throat, knowing he'd feel a threat in the motion. Indeed, Talon's struggles grew more careful. Talons shrugged off a stabbing a lot easier than a jolt of electricity. "You're angry," Jokester added. His voice was barely loud enough to carry the few inches to Talon's ear. He didn't want the Owl overhearing, wherever he was. The others could only keep him busy so long.

"At me," he admitted. He'd had enough vicious injuries to prove that. "At everything. But especially _him_."

He paused just a moment, watching that blank assassin's face. "I don't know what he did to you. I don't know where he got you from, or who you are under there. I don't know what happened to the last kid.

"But if you ever want to get away, if you don't want to be this—you can come to us. We'll do whatever it takes to protect you, if you do."

Talon drew a breath through his teeth. The boys were denied the full-face masks that the Owl wore, the heavy armor that (rumor had it) had been the traditional uniform of Talon, before Owlman had shaken up the ancient Court and claimed it for himself, but so far as anyone could tell they were also denied any identity besides the Talon, and so had nothing to hide besides their expressions. And they rarely had any of those, either, beyond the occasional hungry grin, and even that was mostly the first one, when he'd still been small and acted a little bit like a child.

"Why?" the young killer of today demanded thickly.

"Because you're a kid. Because everybody deserves to be free."

Talon strained the same breath out again. Then he bucked, drove his forehead into Jokester's, brought a knee into his stomach, chopped at the back of his neck with one hand, and somersaulted away while the man recovered.

"Kid?" J asked, only a little gasping.

Lips pressed together, Talon flung a spread of shuriken to keep him back and grappled out through the broken window, withdrawing to his master's side.

Well, it wasn't 'never.' It wasn't even exactly 'no.'

* * *

"Did you mean it?" Talon asked, six months later. He had Jokester at his mercy this time, disarmed, bleeding from one shoulder, on one knee on one of the docks. His voice was low and expressionless, but there was something, some tension in it…J knew what he was asking.

"Always," he grinned, huffing for breath.

"I've killed a lot of people," Talon cautioned him, tipping his straight dagger with Jokester's blood along the edge so that it caught the dim light, gleaming crimson and silver. He didn't have his predecessor's style or uncanny grace, but he was terrible in his own way.

"I know." He wouldn't kill _him_ , of course, not here or now. The Owl hated the Jokester too much to allow that to any of his minions, even the best. His second stay at Arkham had been far more hellish and 1984 than the first, but he'd still escaped, no more broken than before. Owlman probably wouldn't risk it again, no matter how much he wanted to see anarchy brought to heel. He'd kill him himself. But he wouldn't delegate it.

"That's okay?" The boy didn't believe him.

"Of course it's not _okay._ " Talon should be in high school. He should be doing homework and crushing on girls and all that stuff, or cutting class if he wanted, running up and down sidewalks, giving his friends noogies, eating an unhealthy amount of pizza. "But I don't _blame_ you. And anything can be forgiven."

Talon snorted. Twelve words was already just about the most Jokester had ever heard from him in one encounter, but he said, audibly derisive, "You Catholic?" He sounded more human than ever before, and Jokester felt something warm in his chest. He laughed aloud.

"Me? Something with that many rules?" He shook his head. " _Everybody_ deserves to be free." He tipped his head at Talon, eyebrows arcing high. _Coming?_ _Offer's open._

Talon shook his head. "Owlman wants you alive," he said, stepping forward, shoulders set with determination.

Jokester was disappointed, but he didn't let things get him down. "Well, at least he and I have _something_ in common," he cackled. And pushed a hidden switch.

In the ensuing explosion of the dock, he swam safely away. Hoping Talon wasn't punished too harshly for losing him.

* * *

They were in a warehouse again the next time Talon met his eyes.

It had been another four months since that night on the docks, and the boy was growing like a weed—J had surprised himself with a vaguely paternal interest in their youngest enemy at some point. Ed and Harley teased him about it, but she at least understood, and Harvey just told him not to let his guard down far enough to get killed. Waylon didn't care. Pam made no comment. It was being a father himself now, J suspected. You started to extend the constant concern to every titchy set of bones you met.

Right now most of that concern was focused on the five-year-old hostage in the middle of the empty warehouse floor. Her parents were Dominican immigrants and restaurant owners, and apparently too successful and courageous for their own good; they'd defied the Owl's demands for protection money—tithes, he called it, the pompous bag of feathers—and oaths of allegiance, and he'd sent his men to teach them the error of their ways.

The Ortices had gotten word to Jokester's crowd that they were going to need help, and they'd gotten there apparently in time, except that somehow in the opening melee Haskell—one of the Owl's more brutal subordinates; he'd worked for the Russian before Owlman's syndicate drove Dimitrov's out of business—had gotten his hands on the little daughter, and had a gun against her head. She was terrified. Her parents were desperate with fear.

 _We don't even know her name,_ Jokester reflected bitterly, as he and all his people slowly raised empty hands in the air, knowing better than to call this a bluff.

Talon was in charge of this operation, technically, but neither Haskell nor a good half of the other eight hitters who'd been sent with him were at _all_ happy about answering to a kid. Driving that wedge further was, J judged, probably their best chance of getting everyone out alive.

The boy had a commanding enough posture, at least, as he waved Jokester, Harlequin, Enigma, Crocodile, and Janus into a corner, well away from their abandoned gear. J noted a heavy prybar lying abandoned within his reach, and resolved to make that his replacement weapon if he got a chance.

There didn't seem much chance of such an opening. "So," Haskell asked, not directing his question to his immediate superior but to his peers, "do you figure we should kill the freaks now, or should I finish the original job?"

"If we kill them while we still have a hostage, that's easier," said one of those peers, Civaldi, also conspicuously ignoring Talon. (And unreasonably overconfident in their ability to kill J and his friends at all, if they gave up the advantage of a hostage. Especially by _killing her in front of them_. Monsters. J cast a reassuring look at the grey-faced parents, hoping they'd wait and trust the heroes to find the right moment to move. Not that they wouldn't be well within their rights not to, at this point.)

"The boss wants at least one of them alive, though," argued Haskell, bouncing the little girl in the arm that held her against the gun, in a ghastly parody of actual childcare.

"Kneecaps," Civaldi proposed, turning his gun on Harlequin's athletic legs.

It was at this point that Talon backhanded him across the face, in passing, a sort of disinterested reproof for his lack of deference, and came to a halt facing Haskell and his hostage. He was playing with a long knife in one hand, as he often did, and had eyes only for the girl he had apparently been sent to kill.

"Let me see…" Talon murmured, sliding the flat of his knife against the girl's dark, tearstained cheek. J's stomach lurched at the thought of her face cut like his had been, and it was so hard not to lunge forward in hopes of somehow overpowering them both before they could hurt her.

Then Talon's hand had flown upward, knocking the barrel of the gun up so hard and fast that it was pointed roofward before Haskell could jerk the trigger, and then his dagger had cut through the tendons in the man's elbow so he could no longer hold the weapon up to aim it at anything, and Talon plucked the Ortiz girl from his slackening hold and pivoted away, mule-kicking Haskell in the groin even as he tossed the child into her mother's astonished arms. Without hesitating, the boy spun from there to punch Civaldi in the throat.

Harley whooped, did a handspring feetfirst into the nearest enemy face. Ed, deprived of his precious stick, made do with a punch. Harvey, ever prepared, whipped a cosh from inside his jacket. Waylon didn't even _need_ weapons. Jokester, cackling at the top of his lungs, scooped up the crowbar and got clobbering.

It was over in less than a minute, half Talon's squad taken out by him personally before the vigilante types got anywhere near them, and then he stood alone in the middle of the floor, everyone looking at him. His chest was heaving, and Jokester doubted it was primarily from exertion.

J strolled forward before the tension could grow too thick, clapped a hand on Talon's shoulder, which was allowed, though not precisely welcomed. "Taking me up on my offer, kid?" he asked heartily.

Talon nodded. "Last chance," he said, and J knew what he meant. Maybe he'd killed children before and maybe he hadn't, but if he'd gone through with this, when he had any chance of an out…Jokester would still have kept his promise, but it would have been harder. A lot harder. For both of them.

The boy's breathing steadied a little. He reached up to his face, dug with his fingernails, and ripped Talon's mask away, before looking back at J. His eyes were greeny-blue, and spoke a hundred times more than the rest of his face ever had.

"My name is Jason," he said.

Jokester glanced over the boy's shoulder, very briefly, gauging his wife's expression and those of his friends. They'd protect the boy either way, so long as they believed it wasn't a trick, but if what he'd done and been was too much for them to forgive, then he couldn't—nah, it was fine. Jokester's grin stretched all the way across his face, and he dragged the assassin recklessly into a one-armed hug.

"Welcome to the family, Jason." He squeezed once, let go, held the kid at arm's length. "Jaybird?" he tried, rolling the nickname around in his mouth. "How do you like 'Little J?'"

The lost, blindsided look faded from the ex-Talon's eyes in favor of irritation, and he rolled them. "I am so going to regret this, aren't I," he said, but not like he really meant it.

All of Jokester's friends laughed, even Harley where she'd gone over to reassure the Ortices and give the little girl any necessary medical treatment. "Don't be ridiculous," J chortled, clapping him once more on the bicep before turning him loose. "This is the best idea you ever had."

A slight smile bent Jason's stiff lips. "Yeah," he admitted. "Could be."


End file.
